From George Smiley to Quantum or on Fiction, Reality and Creativity around Security

Abstract

This paper aims to bring together the two realms of spy-story (fiction) and Security Studies (reality) along the time of the Cold War and after the implosion of the Soviet Union. It is conceived in terms of an intellectual exercise in which fictional narrative and academic research are put together in order to test their respective “representations” of reality. It debates the problem that is still into the protocol of work of the intelligence community - an old paradigm of “certification” and interpretation of reality is imposed, framing a dynamic and global world into the fragile limits of blind schemes, which unfortunately are reflected in the result of a bureaucratic mind.